The West Central School Board has joined in the opposition to school funding adjustments being considered by the Indiana General Assembly. Last week, the board passed a resolution opposing “the use of public funds to non-public entities” by a vote of five-to-one.
Superintendent Dan Zylstra says the amount of state funding West Central gets per student has increased by only one dollar over the past 10 years. “One of the major concerns is that some of the money that is going out of public schools is going to organizations that don’t have the same levels of accountability for performance or for how they spend those dollars,” he says. “So we had a good discussion about that, and we were happy to do that with the teachers’ association present.”
Zylstra says the resolution specifically cites House Bill 1005 along with two Senate bills that seek to expand voucher programs and create Education Savings Accounts. School boards around the state have been passing similar resolutions, including eight nearby during one big joint session at North White last week.
Still, there was some opposition to the opposition. Zylstra says board member Todd Miller voted against the resolution. “He did not have the same level of concern because he felt like our school always did a good job of competing with the funds that we received, and that we’d done that in the past and could continue to do that in the future,” Zylstra explains.
During Monday’s Eastern Pulaski School Board meeting, Board Member Joe Cunningham expressed his appreciation to everyone who’s spoken out against the proposed legislation, saying he’s never seen anything like the outcry the current round of bills has created.
